I am finally back from Japan! Sorry for my absence and not updating you during my stay there… >< Thanks to you all, me and my family had a great time there. I could also see my old friends and my new family member. There were some cold days like winter and I missed the hot weather in Malaysia, but most of the days were sunny and we could enjoy the autumn weather and food in Japan.

By the way, for November class schedule, I will be posting some requested class for now. I will be updating you end of November & December class schedule soon. Thanks for your understanding and hope to catch up with you soon!!

August passed very fast for me. The exciting Rio Olympic games is about to be finished. I was supporting Japanese players and also Malaysian players every night and morning… I especially liked the swimming part! In the meantime, my daughter had a long school holiday and despite us planning to do things with her, our family fell sick one by one… from either fever or food poisoning during her entire holiday^^; So we ended up watching the Olympic games and doing some non-physical activities in and around our house. In any case, it was an interesting summer holiday for me and I am glad my family is well now. Nothing beats staying healthy!

I would like to post September & October 2016 class schedule today, as I will be going back to Japan in the middle of October to early November. Summer is ending and autumn is coming, and I would like to introduce a couple of new yummy autumn recipes. Let’s enjoy the apple fiesta in the next two months ^^*!

Here is the class schedule; and kindly refer to the Class Calendar, too.

It’s been a very busy month for me! I blinked and it’s already the end of the year! My family and friends in Japan have already started their Christmas & New Year Holidays (in Japan, this is our biggest holiday of the year) and I am excited to spend my New Year holidays with my family in Singapore next week! Before that, I have a few more classes to go~. I have been enjoying baking many Christmas cakes & cookies with my students this month. I also baked a large Black Forest Cake for my daughter’s 4th Birthday party yesterday. Look!

I was thinking what birthday cake to bake until the last minute, but I ended up making this Black Forest because it was so popular among my students ^^. I also baked some macarons in pink and purple color, with my favorite vanilla and chocolate flavors.

I made over 100 pcs and they were snapped up within a few minutes! Yeppie~! I am thinking of baking Strawberry Short Cake for Christmas. So what’s your ‘baking plan’ for the holiday?

By the way, sorry to keep you all waiting for the January 2015 schedule. I will be posting them tomorrow, so please keep yourself posted. Thanks a lot for always supporting me and Caramel Factory!

I just finished my last class of 2013! Thank you so much for coming to my classes this year! I hope you enjoyed baking with me and learned some new recipes and tips^^!

By the way (to my students who took this class), here is the comparison of the pound cakes made using ‘spatula’ vs. ‘hand-mixer’. The one on the left is hand-mixer and the one on the right is spatula. You can see that the one on the left is more fluffier and looks nicer, but for this type of cake it’s better not to whisk too much because the cake gets too airy and dried. It really depends on what type of cake you are baking and also the recipes, and even among pound cakes they vary depending on the method you use, but for my recipes this Foret Noir pound cake and Pistachio pound cake can be said this way.

Anyway, if it’s too confusing for you, just enjoy baking and eating because all you want in the end is to have a stress release time while baking and see a Big Smile on your family & friends’ face when they eat your cakes!

…Just like I had them with my daughter’s 3 year old birthday cake!

Lastly, have a good year end and Happy New Year! I will see you again in 2014 soon! (I shall be posting schedule in the next few days.)

I have been baking this Foret Noir Pound Cake (Black Forest Pound Cake) many times as I talked about it in my previous post. It’s nice and quite fun to make. Each time I bake there were slight difference in look and texture, so it took a while for me to find out the perfect formula. It’s not as simple cake as you think!

It is a two layered cake – chocolate and vanilla cakes, and has a bit of cinnamon scent in the chocolate cake part. We will put pitted cherry in the class as it is Christmas Foret Noir style, but this can be changed to other fruits such as comported pair like the above photo. Each of you will bake this cake in 18cm pound cake mold.

The cake can be eaten both warm and cold, but I personally like it chilled! So in the class I will prepare a cake beforehand so that you all can try both warm and chilled kind. The cake can last for about a week in the fridge, so you can bake them beforehand and give them as a gift to your family and friends during Christmas!

Here are the class dates;

DATE & TIME: December 13th (Fri.) 11:00am-2:30pm

December 28th (Sat.) 11:00am-2:30pm – FULL

FEE: RM180.00 (RM129.00 for members)

*8 students maximum.

To register for the class, please email me at caramelmoko@gmail.com (Tomoko). Thank you for visiting our site and I will be looking forward to hearing from you!!!

I’ve started to bake some cakes again in the last couple of weeks! This is Foret Noir Pound CakeI baked recently. Black Forest (Foret Noir) cake is one of the most popular cakes in Malaysia, so I made it into pound cake. The bottom is moist chocolate cake and top is vanilla pound cake with dark cherry.

It looks similar to the Pistachio Pound Cake I taught in the class before, but is quite different from each other.

I’ve been developing some pound cake recipes including this Foret Noir Pound Cake. I like pound cake because it’s fun to make and nice to eat for tea time, after dinner and even for breakfast with a cup of coffee! I hope to teach this recipe end of the year once I am back, maybe for one of our X’mas menu ^^!

By the way, I am also going to teach this Pistachio Pound Cake maybe early next year because of many requests. I will get pistachio paste soon, so for those students who are looking forward to have it please wait for another 1-2 months! Thanks.